Vodafone Idea Says That a Relationship Model is Essential in the Creation of New Business Income
Vodafone Idea NSE 0.00 % stated that the collaboration model is the key element of its plan for the market growth and the development of new sources of sales.
“We want to have the right set of partners both internationally and locally. Currently, we are focused on segments like financial modelling, process automation, business networking. There are other areas where we will soon enter. We have an aggressive plan on partnership models,” Abhijit Kishore- Chief Enterprise Business Officer- Vodafone Idea told ET.
Kishore said that the company has crafted a new enterprise positioning in the last two quarters. “We are moving from a telco to techco brand positioning in India.”
Recently, Vodafone Idea, rebranded Vi, has entered into strategic relationships with players including Hubbler, Eunimart and Fiskl to reinforce its business activities, especially for small and medium-sized organisations.
The executive said that fixed line data and voice companies in India are rapidly rising within their company sectors. “Within fixed segment, IP/IMPLS is growing fast and in the last two quarters we have seen demand coming from mid and large scale organisations. Demand from hyper scales and OTT players is also very strong.”
He added that cloud telephony has also expanded dramatically along with the digital revolution and solutions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). “Fixed-line voice along with digital business is doing well for us…digital transformation for SME, fixed line voice and bandwidth are three areas that look promising.”
Vodafone Idea is still making great bets in the IoT, cloud and safety division of the Internet of Things. “IoT is a clear focus area for us. We are a couple of quarters ahead of competition. We have an end to end IoT portfolio.”
The telco, he said, is on track for testing of its narrowband IoT or NBIoT network in India. “We are doing small scale proof of concepts and are investing much of our time in that direction.”
Kishore, however, said that the NBIoT device ecosystem will take some time to develop in India since device prices are higher compared to 2G and 4G IoT devices. “While network is one part, creating the device ecosystem is equally crucial.”
The telco’s enterprise arm is working with large data center companies to offer cloud services in the country. “Cloud is a fragmented space…we have our own data centers and we work with partners and work with all larger players. Our business model is very clear. It is partnership based for cloud,” Kishore said.
The telco has recently entered into a partnership with Finnish mobile device provider Nokia Vodafone Idea to jointly propose differentiated solutions like Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) (GPON).
Kishore said that there is a strong demand for FWA and private LTE networks in India. For private LTE, it is a segmented need coming from industrial and manufacturing segments. “People want their factories automated and they need private LTE for quality and speed.”
Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) is also demanding FWA connectivity. “Companies in this segment want a dedicated network in far flung areas to either connect their branches or ATM. At times, FWA is needed for surveillance,” he said.